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Output Filename and Formats

RAMI4ATM phase

Output file naming convention for RAMI4ATM phase



In RAMI4ATM each individual experiment is identified, as in the previous RAMI-V phase, as a combination of a test case and a measurement.


As schematized in Figure 1, each test case originates from the combination of a specific scenario, which describes the coupled surface/atmosphere system, a spectral band (<BND>) and the geometry of illumination (<zZZaAAA>).

structure of the output filenames <MAΤP> <MAΤP> <BND> <zZZaAAA> <meas>
Figure 1: Structure of the output filenames (last line of the table), and equivalence between the terminology used to describe the experiment foreseen in RAMI4ATM. Note the "dash" is used ONLY to separate test case and meas tags in the filename, otherwise the "underscore" should be used to separate all remaining tags.

Each participant is asked to identify submitted output files with the _<model> tag.

The filename is case sensitive, hence upper and lower letters should be used as they appear in the template of Figure 1.

The <model> tag is the user's model name. It should be composed of a maximum of 20 characters (including [a-b][0-9] - ).
It is encouraged to use a meaningful name including at least a reference to your team. For instance, to distinguish different submission of the same model as operated by different users, the system will accept model names such as, model1-team1. Furthermore, in case team1 would use model1 in a different configuration (to be specified in the "note" field), a suitable model name would then be model1-team1-version1.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of information that users are advised to include in the note field during the model registration (note: this is editable even after the model registration):

  • aerosol dataset used
  • atmospheric profile used
  • canopy leaves definition used
  • any variant of surface model not listed in the scenarios
  • computation conditions (sampling counts, number of quadrature points, fast/precise mode, spectral resolution... etc.)

Some examples of valid filenames are given below:

  • HOM00_BLA_SD2S_M8A_z30a000-brfop_raytran.mes
    • identifying an experiment performed with the Raytran model for the case with no canopy (HOM00), a black surface (BLA), a Rayleigh atmosphere (SD2S), desert aerosol (SD2S) with AOD550=0.2 (SD2S), Standard water vapour and Ozone profiles (SD2S), in the red band of MSI (M8A), with a solar zenith angle of 30° (z30) and an azimuth angle of 0° (a000). The experiment simulates the measure of the bidirectional reflectance factor (brfop) in the orthogonal plane.
  • HOM00_LAM_S00S_M02_z30a000-bhr_eradiate.mes
    • No canopy, lambertian surface, purely scattering atmosphere (S00S), no aerosol (S00S), standard water vapour and ozone profile as before, Sentinel-2A band M02, sza = 30°, saa = 0°, and bi-hemispherical reflectance measure (bhr)
  • HOM25_LAM_S00S_M02_z30a000-hdrfpp_discret.mes
    • planophile canopy, Lambertian surface, scattering only, no aersols, standard TCWV, Sentinel-2A band M02, sza = 30°, saa = 0°, hdrfpp measure.

This page lists all the information needed to perform the experiments defined by RAMI4ATM. The information to setup each individual experiment listed by the file RAMI4ATM experiments names, can be obtained from each section listed in the left menu, or by scanning the RAMI4ATM experiments description JSON file, described in the following section.

List of permissible <HOMxx>_<SUR>


The surface identifiers in the experiment filenames are HOM00_LAM, HOM00_BLA, HOM00_WHI, HOM00_RPV, HOM00_RLI (for surfaces without the canopy component), and HOM25_LAM, HOM35_LAM, HOM45_LAM (for the homogeneous canopies with Planophile, Erectophile and Uniform LAD, respectively).


<HOMxx>_<SUR> identifier tag Surface description
HOM00_LAM Lambertian
HOM00_BLA Black Lambertian
HOM00_WHI White Lambertian
HOM00_RPV Anisotropic RPV
HOM00_RLI Anisotropic Ross-Li
HOM25_LAM Homegeneous Discrete Canopy (with Planophile LAD)
with Lambertian background
HOM35_LAM Homegeneous Discrete Canopy (with Erectophile LAD)
with Lambertian background
HOM45_LAM Homegeneous Discrete Canopy (with Uniform LAD)
with Lambertian background
Table 1: List of surface identifier tags and their short description.

List of permissible <MAΤP>


<MAΤP> tag is used to describe the atmosphere. It is composed of 4 alphanumerical codes representing the molecular scattering and/or absorption (M), the aerosol type (A), the aerosol optical thickness at 550 nm (Τ), and finally the atmospheric profile (P) which can be rescaled accordingly to different values of water vapour and ozone. Table 12 shows the possible values for each of the <MAΤP> codes. It should be pointed out here that in RAMI4ATM consider only a subset of all the possible combinations of the four codes.


Molecules Aerosols Aerosol optical thickness Molecular rescaling profiles
#1
char		 #2
char		 #3
char		 Priority #4
char		   Priority
A
absorption
S
scattering
E
extintion (scattering and Absorption combined)
0
for no molecules
D
desert
C
continental
0
no aerosols
6
for 0.6		2
2
for 0.2		1
0
no aerosols		 
S Standard value, no rescaling 1
DDry atmosphere, TCWV rescaled to a low value 2
WWet atmosphere, TCWV rescaled to a high value 3
OHigh Ozone concentration rescaling 2
LLow Ozone concentration rescaling 2
HHigh Ozone and
high TCWV		 2
Table 2: List of the codes used to create the atmospheric <MAΤP> tag. Priority order is relevant only for the aerosol optical depth (T) and profile (P) codes.

Ozone\WV/th> Low Standard High
Low - L -
Standard D S W
High - O H
Table 2A: Definition of the available combinations of total vertical content of water vapour and ozone, and their respective P value.

Possible combinations are:


Atmospheric Family   <MAΤP> Number of internal variance Link
Molecular Scattering Molecular Scattering S00S 1 S0xx.lst
Molecular Scattering
+
Aerosol		 Molecular Scattering SCτS
SDτS		 2 + 2 SAxx.lst
Molecular Absorbing Molecular Scattering A00$p$ 6 A0xx.lst
Molecular Absorbing
+
Aerosol		 Molecular Scattering AC$\tau$$p$
AD$\tau$$p$		 12 + 12 AAxx.lst
Molecular Extinction Molecular Scattering E00$p$ 6 E0xx.lst
Molecular Extinction
+
Aerosol		 Molecular Scattering EC$\tau$$p$
ED$\tau$$p$		 12 + 12 EAxx.lst
No gas Molecular Scattering 0C$\tau$S
0D$\tau$S		 4 0Axx.lst
All -- 69 MATP.lst
Table 3: The seven atmospheric families and their tag code templates in <MATP> column. In lowercase the letters defining the internal variants ($\overrightarrow{\tau}$ = (2, 6), $\overrightarrow{p}$ = (L,D,S,W,O,H) ). The number of internal variants are given in the fourth column and the last column links to the lists of all variants per atmospheric family. A total of 69 atmospheric model arises from the various combinations.



List of permissible <BND>


Only 6 bands Sentinel-2A MSI are considered in RAMI4ATM.


<BND> identifier tag Tag meaning Priority
M02Sentinel-2A MSI band 02, Blue band1
M03Sentinel-2A MSI band 03, Green band1
M04Sentinel-2A MSI band 04, Red band1
M8ASentinel-2A MSI band 08a, NIR1
M11Sentinel-2A MSI band 11, SWIR2
M12Sentinel-2A MSI band 12, SWIR2
Table 4: List of <BND> identifier tags and their short description.

The corresponding JSON dotted notation is 

scenario.observations.measures.satellite
scenario.observations.measures.instrument
scenario.observations.measures.band

All optical properties are assumed spectrally invariant within the considered MSI bands.


To calculate the spectral properties for each band we performed the convolution of the extraterrestrial solar spectrum with the spectral response and the reflectance spectrum of soil, leaf or trunks , accordingly to the equation

\begin{equation} X= \frac {\int_0^\infty S_{0\lambda} R(\lambda) \rho(\lambda) d\lambda}{\int_0^\infty S_{0\lambda} R(\lambda) d\lambda} \label{eq:convolution} \end{equation}
Equation [1]

The MSI spectral responses functions (S2-SRF) $S_\lambda$ were taken from "Sentinel-2 Spectral Response Functions" file.


List of permissible <zZZaAAA>

Illumination angles are described using a RAMI-V compatible convention.

In RAMI4ATM, only 4 illumination conditions are considered, corresponding to different sun zenith angles. Considering the number of different scenarios in RAMI4ATM, it has been decided to prioritise the computation order depending on the SZA.


<zZZZaAA> identifier tag Value of the solar zenith Value of the solar azimuth Priority
z00a0000.00.02
z30a00030.00.01
z60a00060.00.03
z75a00075.00.04
Table 5: List of <zZZZaAA> identifier tags and their corresponding sun zenith angles.

The corresponding JSON dotted notation is 

scenario.observations.illumination.saa
scenario.observations.illumination.sza

List of permissible <meas>


Three different measures are taken in consideration: Bi-directional Reflectance Factor, Bi-Hemispherical Reflectance and Hemispherical Directional Reflectance.

Table 6 lists the measurement tags and the links to the corresponding file format description pages. The last column refers to the vertical level at which the measurement will be carried out.


<meas> Identifier tag Link to Format file description Level of the measurement
bhr Bi-Hemispherical Reflectance BOA
hdrfpp Hemispherical Directional Reflectance Factor in the principal plane BOA
hdrfop Hemispherical Directional Reflectance Factor in the orthogonal plane BOA
brfpp Bi-directional Reflectance Factor in the principal plane TOA
brfop Bi-directional Reflectance Factor in the orthogonal Plane TOA
Table 6: Values of the measurement tag, links to file format description pages, and level of applicability of the measure.

The corresponding JSON dotted notation is 

scenario.observations.measures.measure_type